M. G. Lazarev Actor's House

Brief Information

The Actor's House was conceived not as a formal theater for audiences, but as a club for the theater community itself. That is why its location on Vilonovskaya Street is important: the site was chosen near Samara's two main theaters, the Opera and Ballet Theater and the Drama Theater. The building functions as an intermediate place between the stage and professional exchange.

Construction was completed by 1973. At first, it housed the local branch of the All-Russian Theatre Society and opened an auditorium for 285 people. Later, the building became home to the Rakurs art film club, and since 2006 the Actor's House theater has operated there. In this way, one building brought together a club, a stage, and cinema, rather than serving only an administrative function.

What to Notice First

It is worth noticing the building's linear composition, elongated along the street. It makes the Actor's House not a separate theater box, but an extended urban facade. This appearance is connected with Soviet architectural modernism: the building is read through its form, planes, and placement along the street, rather than through historical decoration.

An important feature of the facade is the chased aluminum relief by Alexey Shteiman. The metal here is not merely decoration: it shows how a modernist building acquired an artistic sign connected with the theater community. It can be compared with the reconstructed ground floor, the main stage, and the small stage named after Nikolai Simonov: the different parts recall that the house was gradually adapted for a club, performances, and meetings. In the square opposite, another external accent has been added: an abstract sculpture of dancing ballerinas.